Revision as of 16:57, 2 December 2009

The purpose of the lab is, at the highest level, the same as the purpose of the forum, which is to help enhance Linux and Linux technologies for use in Consumer Electronics products.

The lab exists to provide testing and quality assurance benefits to the entire Linux community, including CE Linux forum members.

The core of the lab is located in San Jose, but a satellite lab (an extension to the main lab) is planned for Tokyo, and additional lab nodes may be added to the lab as part of a completely distributed lab model.

The lab is available for use by CE Linux Forum members, and will be made available to open source community members as well.

The lab provides resources for a number of different testing activities:

Interactive board usage via remote access - In this mode, an individual developer reserves a target board in the lab, and interactively compiles the kernel and other software, loads it on the target board, and runs tests on the board. This mode allows a developer to have access to hardware which they don't have on their own desk.

Automated multi-platform testing - A developer can also request that the same test be performed across multiple platforms. This is useful to see whether a particular feature or fix works on multiple platforms, or to compare performance or functionality results between platforms.

Nightly regression tests - The test lab will be configured with a set of tests to run at periodic intervals (e.g. nightly), using software updated to latest versions. This will be used to test for regression of features or functionality, and results will be provided to the public. In particular, the results are intended to be useful to the open source community, to notify developers about problems in new versions of Linux software.

Private test usage - In addition to public use of lab hardware, and publishing of open results, tests from the lab will be made available for private use. That is, a client can use the tests and test infrastructure of the lab to test a board locally. The lab infrastructure should make this very easy. The intent of this is to make the lab useful for internal quality assurance testing, whether for private individuals or large corporations.